#Google confirms mid-December #search ranking algorithm updates

Google has confirmed what many in the search industry have seen over the past week, updates to their algorithm that are significantly shifting rankings in the SERPs. A google spokesperson told Search Engine Land “We released several minor improvements during this timeframe, part of our regular and routine efforts to improve relevancy.” Our own Barry Schwartz analyzed his Search Engine Roundtable survey of 100 webmasters and concluded that the updates are related to keyword permutations and sites utilizing doorway pages . You can read his full analysis here . Early signs point to mobile & schema I reached out to a few of the SEO tool vendors that do large scale tracking of ranking fluctuations to get their sense of where the updates may be targeted. Ilya Onskul, the Product Owner of SEMrush Sensor gave this analysis: “SEMrush Sensor follows all the changes that occur on Goo...